Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, December 6, 1995

'Traps," a striking debut film from first-time director Pauline Chan of Australia, is a steamy yet somewhat stilted story about intimate relationships whose lines blur in disturbing ways in the swelter of 1950s colonial Vietnam.

The atmospheric tale focuses on an Anglo Australian journalist couple from London, assigned to write a happy report about the successes of an over seas rubber plantation. They're caught in a contentious marriage and hope the all-expenses- paid, far-flung trip will help recapture fading romance. But visiting a lush, hot place that is alive with tangy beauty and shadowy, perilous intrigue only exaggerates their troubles, and they become, well, trapped . . . prisoners of new desperations.

"Traps" is presented in spare imagery, but it's a skillfully layered film, acted with sinewy sexiness by British star Saskia Reeves, as the photographer wife, and hostile intransigence by Australian Robert Reynolds as her writer husband. Although the film deals with the unseen, Chan raises one veil after another to reveal raw humanity, needy or lonely and forced to take surprising measures.

It's tough, for some reason, to entice American audiences to see films about Vietnam. But "Traps," opening today at the Clay, may break new ground. (Director Tran Anh Houg's enchanting and architecturally stunning "The Scent of Green Papaya" seemed hardly to create a stir among moviegoers last year. It was filmed in Paris on a set; "Traps" was shot in Vietnam.)

NO HOUSEHOLD NAMES

The singularly unromantic title is likely to be little help as an audience lure. And stars Reeves, Reynolds and another Australian, Jacqueline McKenzie, who plays a confused teenage daughter, are far from household names. The key role of the plantation manager is played by Sami Frey, the well- known French actor ("The Little Drummer Girl").

One of the film's most curious elements is that it is based on an unlikely source -- the 1986 novel, "Dreamhouse," by Kate Grenville. That book, set in Northern Italy, had nothing remotely to do with Vietnam or colonialism.

Chan takes major risks in her shifted adaptation of Grenville's story about a woman who begins to shake off the trap of her marriage in a Tuscany household she's visiting. Everyone there seems imprisoned in well-ordered contentment, but each reveals in bits and pieces faces of misery or treachery. Ultimately, Grenville's heroine finds solace in a lesbian love.

The sensual "Traps" places Louise (Reeves) and Michael (Reynolds) at a rubber plantation overseen by French manager Daniel Renouard (Frey). Husband Michael, the reporter, hardly notices anything, while wife Louise, the photographer, is always stumbling into new revelations that she doesn't know how to explain to anyone.

The film's 1950s setting lends plausibility to the notion that even accomplished women like Louise are still relegated to backseat lives. Their French host is genially imperious but his overpoliteness is suspicious, even menacing. He reveals a homosexual interest in the husband. The empty plantation mansion, rather than standing as a colonial bastion, looks like a wilted flower of French provincial style in the a lush tropical setting.

The host's disturbed daughter, Viola (McKenzie), is pasty from chronic malaria. But her pallor does little to hide a bratty vitality and restless sexual awakening.

FORGET PARIS

The Frenchman's affection for Vietnam is so strong he no longer yearns for Paris. But he knows a hostile political climate is turning against the Europeans. His daughter has a crush on the manor's Vietnamese houseboy, Tuan (Kiet Lam), but it's a hopeless romance. Tuan is sympathetic with the politically zealous Viet Minh, communists devoted to the violent overthrow of the French. "Traps" is ambitious, perhaps a little naive, but it effectively tangles the personal and the political in its exploration of uncertain lines between love and exploitation, whether involving marriage, industry or colonized nations. Though the film is weakened by an ending that seems to trail off, "Traps" is tantalizing.

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